On being one of Mail Online’s two paid columnists, along with Piers Morgan, she said: “The audience we pull on some of the stuff we write is off the scale. They are brave.

“The Madeleine McCann article I wrote, nobody would touch that. In other papers I’ve worked for I was never allowed to write about that topic.

“The Mail will back you and they will provide the legal support that will allow you that freedom. Everyone else is terrified of compliance, terrified of legal costs and terrified of their own shadow.

“I articulate views that a lot of people feel but feel they can no longer say.”

Hopkin left The Sun for Mail Online in September 2015.

She also spoke about being questioned by police over a Sun article which she wrote in April 2015 in which said African migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe were like “cockroaches” and said that gunships should be used to drive their boats back.

She said: “When my Sun column came out about the migrants, which the head of the UN criticised…and then the Met Police major crime and homicide command, I went in and was interviewed under caution for my copy, for the words I write.

“I don’t question have I gone over the line, I question whether our policing and the head of the UN – do they have insufficient things to do?

“I quite enjoyed it. I had a brilliant barrister who looked like someone from Eastenders…

“My case was taken to the CPS because the people that launched the complaint were the Society for Black Lawyers… and if they didn’t take the case forward they might be seen as being racist…It was discredited as being nonsense.

“That’s just the reality for people like myself who are trying to keep some of freedom of press and freedom of speech, that’s what we are up against.”